Narrow Escape (28 page)

Of course, almost as soon as I'd had this thought the television clicked off and the fridge, humming away to itself under the sink, shuddered into silence.

“Mum, the electricity's gone.” Sam looked up from where he was working on a piece of homework about the Great Fire of London.

“Thank you, Sam.” I heaved myself to my feet and began looking for gloves, hat, scarf, and anything else I could layer on to keep the wind from stripping the flesh from my bones. “I think I noticed that.”

Sam grinned and went back to writing his screenplay. The laptop, with its own battery, would run for at least another half an hour, long enough for me to get the generator running.

I clambered out of the boat and, pulling my hat firmly down over my eyes and ears, battled my way to the back of the boat. I climbed down into the back cabin and glared at the generator, squatting big and red just above the engine. Checking the fuel levels I noticed that the red fuel indicator was nowhere to be seen. I groaned and lifted the jerry can of diesel just to make sure there was some still there. We had loads, the can was so heavy and full it was difficult to lift. “Oh that's just great,” I whined to myself. Heaving the can to the step, I positioned it so that I could just tip it and grabbing the plastic jug that I used to fill the generator I carefully held it beneath the can and began to pour. When the jug was full I carefully carried it through to the engine room, climbed the step that I had to use to be able to reach the top and poured the diesel into the reservoir. Three trips like this and the tank was full, job one done. Once the generator had fuel there was a checklist of things to do: turn off the inverter, there's no point leaving the inverter on as the batteries don't charge nearly as quickly as they do when it's off. Walk back around the generator, making sure to duck under all the cables and other bits of engine. Once in position run through the start-up checks: generator on, check. Lever one moved to run, check. Lever marked decompression pulled down, check. Cut-off switches in the up position, check. Turn the key, check.

The generator coughed loudly into life and I waited for the engine note to settle into its normal steady chug while I climbed around to the other side of the engine. Change switch from battery to generator, check. Turn on exhaust fan system, check. I stood and watched as the battery charger illuminated and then, confident that this would run for a couple of hours, backed out of the cramped engine room and into the open air. I waved to Janis who was sitting hunched at her sewing machine and then made a bolt back into the warm; I put the kettle on and then went back to watching my interrupted film.

About half an hour later, Sam and I looked up from what we were doing at exactly the same moment. The engine note from the generator had changed. One minute it would be humming along and then it would dip as though disappearing over a hill and then come back loudly for a moment.

Sam voiced my thoughts. “That doesn't sound good.”

I shook my head and without even bothering to dress for the cold hopped out of the boat.

Black and grey smoke billowed in huge clouds from both rear doors. I only hesitated a moment before running at full pelt down the length of the boat. I swung in through the back doors in a mad rush to get to the generator.

I could hardly see a thing. Thick smoke filled both the engine room and the back cabin. Feeling my way around the boat engine I grabbed the emergency cut off switch and pushed it upward. The generator whined and shuddered into silence and the smoke began to clear.

“Are you all right?” Janis stuck her head into the back cabin and was almost pushed overboard as I barrelled out into the open air coughing and spluttering, my eyes streaming tears. “What happened?”

I couldn't answer her for a couple of seconds, I was coughing so hard. “I have no idea,” I finally managed to get some words out.

While I indulged in another bout of coughing, Janis went to make coffee and we stood staring at the back of my boat as the last wisps of black smoke escaped from the engine room.

“What are you going to do?” Janis shook her head and gathered up the cups. “I'm not sure that's fixable.”

“I honestly don't know.” I reached into one of the little drawers in the back cabin and pulled out the user's manual. “I can't wait until Geoff comes home, he might not be back until late. I'm going to have to try and work out what happened.”

Janis and I looked at each other. Really, there was no need to say anything at all, we both knew how likely that was going to be.

“Let me know if you need any help,” she said.

I nodded, thanked her and then began to study the manual. It didn't make any sense at all, most of it seemed to be in Chinese.

Opening the side hatches gave me a good view of the generator and, in an effort to find some sort of inspiration, I squatted down and stared at the infernal machine. I knew I was going to have to take the damn thing apart but I really wasn't sure what I could do with the bits after that.

Leaning forward I peered into the wooden box that Geoff had made in an attempt to make the generator quieter. A particularly vicious gust of wind blew and after a stumble I fell forward into the engine room. I didn't hit the floor. My reaching hand had found a spar to hold on to. But, from my slightly prone position I noticed something a little odd and, reaching down with one hand I wiped my fingers across the floor. Black oil dripped from each digit back into the dark pool beneath the generator. “I'm sure that wasn't there yesterday.” I muttered. Pushing myself back onto dry land I reversed and slid through the hatch to stand on top of the battery box. Using my phone as a torch I shone a light into the generator box. The bottom was slick with oil; the metal feet of the generator were completely submerged in a little pool of the stuff.

A spider dropped down from the ceiling and before it could touch the oil I grabbed its strand of web and deposited it into the back cabin as I was gathering screwdrivers and other implements of destruction. “I'd stay out of the way if I were you,” I told it. “I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing here.” The spider eyed me balefully and then scuttled off into a corner. “Good choice,” I muttered at it.

Armed with every tool I felt that I could possibly use, some that I hoped I wouldn't have to, and some that I wasn't even sure what their function was, I made my way back to the generator and started to disassemble the case. Oil trickled everywhere, making holding the tools very difficult. Eventually I managed to get the sides of the case off and I could see the machine. A small yellow plastic prong thing lay half submerged in the oil. I picked it up and wiped it off. It looked very familiar. I looked up and spotted the same spider watching me from the top of the door. “That's the damn dip-stick for the oil,” I told it, it didn't care.

Climbing over the mess I'd made and around to the other side of the generator I triumphantly went to put the dipstick back in its place. I couldn't, there was one already in there. “Is this a spare?” The spider, obviously fed up with being addressed by some eminently confused and oil-stained human completely ignored me and amused itself by dangling from one of the lights, waving its legs around to cast Poe-like shadows on the wall.

I placed the yellow stick into my pocket and began to search through the exploded diagrams shown in the manual. I was really hoping to find out if this was something important or something Geoff had just left in the bottom of the box for want of a better place to put it. Eventually, on a small diagram, uncoloured and unlabeled I saw that there were indeed supposed to be two. Placing my hand beneath the generator I felt around for a wet, cold hole. It was difficult, the sun was setting and the temperature had hit minus three. My fingers felt numb and my teeth had begun to chatter. Eventually I found what I was looking for and after only a couple of swear words managed to get the wretched thing back in place.

It turned out that both yellow sticks had the same use just in two different places. They both kept the oil in the sump. One, however, was used as a dip stick and the other would be the only way to change the oil. I could only assume that, with the vibrations of the generator, it had worked its way loose and had fallen out, thus dumping the entire contents of the sump out of the machine and onto the floor.

I tightened the stick as hard as I could and set about cleaning up the spilled oil. This took longer than the repair and by the time I'd finished I had more on me than the floor. The sun had set and I was working by dim 12-volt light. I refilled the generator with oil and went through all the normal checks. I decided I had two chances, either I was going to be lucky and the gods of heavy machinery would smile on me and the thing would work, or the head gasket had vaporised and I was going to be smoked out like a wasps' nest in an attic. The engine turned over and I held my breath. Apart from the normal wisps of exhaust smoke there didn't seem to be a problem. Unwilling to trust my luck I tucked myself on to the step and sat, listening to the generator for a good five minutes. At the end of this time, the generator was still running perfectly but I was sure I was hovering on the edge of hypothermia. I decided enough was enough and climbed out of the boat.

Two hours later and the generator was still running. Geoff stepped through the door and was greeted by Sam yelling, “The generator blew up but Mum fixed it. Dad! DAD, Mum fixed something.”

Geoff looked a little surprised. “What happened?”

I told him about my day and, when I'd finished, he got up and made tea. “I know I said you were going to have to pick up slack,” he said. “But I think this goes well above and beyond the call of duty, you know.”

“Once I got over the panic it was actually a fairly simple problem.” I had to admit I was feeling quite good but I did have to also admit this hadn't been the mechanical nightmare that it might have been. “I didn't actually have to take the generator apart, I just found something that had dropped off.”

“Did you find out what was wrong?” Geoff said.

“Well, yes.”

“Did you put it back together after fixing it?” He grinned at me.

“Well, yes but …”

“Did you recognise what the yellow thing was?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah, but it was just a …”

“Shut up,” Geoff handed me a cup of tea. “It broke, you fixed it, you get cake.” He waved a box of chocolate éclairs at me. “If you carry on being modest you don't get one.”

I gave him my best smile. “I fixed it, I get cake.”

“So you do,” he said.

In all honesty, although it had appeared scary and smoky the repair hadn't been that difficult and over the next two weeks I took on a lot more of those little jobs that previously I would have avoided as if they'd been snakes in grass. By the time Christmas arrived and it was time to go and visit my parents, I'd become a regular handy person and was finding the benefits of living out in the wilds quite extensive, all I needed now was a hat made out of bear skin and I would have been sorted.

After the trials and tribulations of the past five months Christmas was a welcome break. Unlike other years where it was all a bit of a trial, this year I was positively looking forward to the whole thing. Charlie was coming down from Cardiff and my sister and her brood were also making an appearance. My mother was in a whirlwind of excitement and preparation and my father had taken to hiding in the attic with his train set.

The four days sped by and soon it was time to return to our weird little crop of land in the middle of nowhere. My mother, however, was less than convinced by the whole thing.

“So, let me get this straight,” she said, peering at me over the top of a large cup of coffee, “You are now living where there are no services at all?”

I nodded and shrugged. “Well, there's no electricity, but there is water.”

“And you have to park half a mile away?”

I nodded again. “It's probably not that far but it is a bit of a walk.”

“So you have to carry everything you need to the boat over half a mile of wind and rain and outsideness.”

“Well, when you put it like that of course it's going to sound bad,” I said.

She threw her hands up in the air. “It doesn't
sound
bad, it
is
bad,” she said. “Honestly I thought your last place was bad enough. I can't even begin to imagine somewhere even more basic than
that
.”

“Well, it certainly gives a sense of that pioneering spirit.” I gave her a big grin. She wasn't fooled for a moment.

“Don't you ever want to be normal?” She did try to make the question less than accusatory; she failed.

I had to laugh at her pained expression. “Not really no, and when Sam leaves to go to uni or whatever he does then we're hoping to set off into the real wilds.”

Getting to her feet, Mum sniffed. “I have no idea where you get this attitude from,” she said. “I blame your father.”

I looked over at my dad, feet up, big toe sticking out of a hole in his sock, covered in dried paint, fast asleep, and snoring fit to shake the rafters, he looked very comfortable in his own skin. I had to smile; Mum was probably right, there did seem to be a family leaning toward the scruffy and anti-social.

Chapter Thirteen:
Freezing, Wet, And Windswept Then … Bloody January Again.

“Mum!”

I jumped and peered at Sam who was currently enticing Mortimer to sit on my stomach. Rolling over, I tried desperately to keep my eyes open as I stared at the clock. It was 5.30 on a Thursday morning. “Wha's the matter?” I yawned again and, grabbing the well-loved and padded oversized checked shirt that acted as my dressing gown these days, dragged myself into a semi-slumped upright position.

“Snow! SNOW!”

“Oh is that all?” Wrapping my shirt around me against the cold in the boat I gently toppled over and landed on top of Geoff who groaned from beneath the covers.

It was no good, once I was awake no amount of pretending I wasn't was going to actually get me back to sleep. I staggered out of bed wincing as the frigid air bit into any part of me that wasn't aggressively covered. I pulled open the door to the log burner and cleared out all of last night's ashes. Grouping the little coven of red coals into a small huddle in the middle of the firebed I carefully applied slivers of wood and then grinned in satisfaction as tiny flickers of light appeared. It doesn't matter how often I did that particular job it was always a happy moment when the flames started licking at the new wood.

I took a couple of minutes more to pile on ever larger pieces of wood and then a layer of coal. I shut the door and then opened the vent as far as it would go. It really wouldn't take long for all that to catch. Wandering down the boat, still half-ignoring Sam who, after checking his school's web site, was ecstatic that it was closed and was busy planning what to do with his windfall of a free day. I put the kettle on as I went past, not only does it get us tea but it helps to speed up the process of heating the boat up.

I was almost all the way to the bathroom when I heard Sam say. “I wonder where my sledge is.”

Oh poot!

I hadn't actually told him that I'd had a little accident with his sledge at the end of last year. I'd had the stunning idea that I could load it up with coal and drag it over the flood defences. Unfortunately one of the ropes had snapped and the sledge had rushed off down the hill carrying my coal with it. This, in itself, hadn't actually been much of a trauma but when it reached the bottom of the hill it ran into a metal box that we used to keep tools in. The coal had been fine, it had just flopped off the sledge and lay in the snow waiting for someone to pick it up. The sledge hadn't faired so well; old and tired it had positively disintegrated on impact; bits of painted wood had littered the snow over a five-foot radius. Ever one to see the good side of anything; I'd gathered what bits I could and had burnt it on the fire.

“I think we'll have to buy you a new one, Sam,” I said.

Sam wasn't particularly impressed that I'd used his sledge as fuel and told me so over and over again on our trip down to Ely. I had to admit to feeling a little guilty which is probably why he got a much better sledge than he might otherwise have.

Once back home he shot out with new sledge in tow. Almost knocking Janis over, as he scampered out he shouted back at apology.

“Well, he looks happy,” Janis commented as she stuck her head through the door.

I nodded. “Any day off school is a good day, even if it's actually a rubbish day it still feels like an unexpected gift.”

Janis managed to dissuade Mortimer from eating her ears and then shovelled him off the end of the sofa and refused to let him back on again. The dog, banned from loving mutilation, sulked in his basket.

“Coffee?” I waved the bottle of rum at her. “Are you driving again today?”

I'd completely forgotten that Janis wasn't as au fait with my rum and coffee habits as some other people and realised that she might see me as a complete lush. She looked taken aback for a moment but slowly a grin spread across her face and she nodded. “What a good idea,” she said.

By the time we'd finished our first coffee and were well down our second, Sam had trailed sadly back into the boat. “I'm bored and lonely,” he said. “Come out and sledge with me.”

I was just about to open my mouth and reel off a complete list of why that would be a bad idea when Janis said, “OK then.”

“What?”

“Don't be such an old fuddy-duddy,” she said. “Lead on, Sam, I haven't sledged for years, but I'll give it a go.”

As they left, Mortimer and I stared at each other. “I don't know why you're looking at me in that smug way,” I told him. “If I'm going down you're going down with me.”

Ten minutes later and we were all standing on top of the flood defences. Mortimer who had been rootling around in one of the log collections came and stood next to us. He was shivering. We all stared down the steep slope; it seemed a long way down to the bottom.

Sam handed the ropes of his new sledge to Janis. “Go on then,” he said. He gave her a big smile. He obviously wasn't expecting her to rise to his challenge. He was sadly mistaken.

“All right.” Janis settled herself onto the sledge and began to gather up the ropes.

Mortimer stared at the big red plastic sledge. His ears pricked up and his eyes flattened which is never a good sign. Step by step he deliberately advanced on the red sledge that was, by now, teetering on the very edge of the long run down to the hedge that bordered the field beyond.

“Mortimer!” Janis eyed the dog as he stalked toward her, mouth open, teeth showing. “What's he doing?” She dug her feet into the snow and prepared to stand up out of the way of a dog that was definitely looking more than a little purposeful.

As she tried to stand up the sledge moved, only slightly, but that was enough to drive Mortimer from stalk to attack. Bounding across the snow he grabbed the edge of the saucer-shaped sledge in his mouth and without fear of being run over he pulled the plastic toy, with Janis still on board, over the edge of the hill and away down to the gully running at the bottom.

Janis screamed as Mort's teeth closed around the plastic and she didn't stop screaming until she was face down in a pile of snow at the bottom of the hill. Mort, the sledge between his teeth, tore around and around with his prize. It took the combined might of both Sam and myself to retrieve it. Then we went looking for Janis.

There really wasn't much of her to find. While Sam and I had been chasing the dog she had managed to flip over and was now lying on her back, half buried in snow, staring up at the trees. She raised her head and glared at us. “Well, that was a little faster than I would have liked,” she said. “That dog of yours is completely insane.” She lay back in the snow her whole body shaking with laughter.

I looked down at the
insane
dog and he stared up at me. His big golden eyes were wide and completely blameless. Tail wagging, he shuffled closer to the sledge that I was holding out of his reach. “I wonder if he'd do it again,” I said.

Well, as the whole activity was dangerous and more than a little stupid of course he would. For the next hour, Janis, Sam, and I were Mortimer-propelled around on the sledge. Eventually Janis had to leave because her customers had turned up to pick up some sofa cushions. They'd been watching our ridiculous antics as they walked across the flood defences and it really didn't take much pressure from us for them to join in. Mortimer was in his element.

“Doesn't he mind doing that?” one of the other neighbours enquired as she wandered up to join us.

“Evidently not,” I said. “I'm not telling him or forcing him, he's not tied to the sledge he's just pulling it along with his teeth. I think he's enjoying it almost as much as we are.

With a bit of pressure we managed to convince this new neighbour (I didn't even know her name) onto the sledge and Mort happily dumped another person face first into the snow. I began to wonder if this really was the best way to meet new people. Well they'd certainly remember us.

That night both Mortimer and Sam slept very, very soundly.

Apart from the joys of dog-propelled sledging, the rest of the month was a hard slog. As expected, the water froze and it became a daily grind to drag big bottles of water and twenty-kilo bags of coal over the frozen ground. Because the boat was now so far away, every little trip became an exercise in load-carrying logistics. Boat maintenance now went from half an hour a day to just over three.

It didn't seem to matter how much wood we cut, we were always just running out and a bag of coal lasted no more than two days. Getting out of the boat to go to school or work became more and more difficult and a lot of time was spent scraping cars. I was desperate to see some sign of spring after the year we'd had but knew full well that nothing would change for at least eight to ten weeks.

It seemed as though the weather was affecting not only everybody but everything. One Saturday morning in late January, Sam, Geoff, and I, packed up to the ears with shopping bags, washing, gas canisters, and anything else we could conceivably need, trudged our weary way to the car. Sam, given control of a huge bag of washing, muttered imprecations against the woman who had let the pile get this big. Spotting his sledge buried under the wood pile he stopped for a moment and eyed the washing bag and then studied the sledge. I turned to glance at Geoff, he grinned, we knew exactly what Sam was thinking but in the still January morning you could almost hear the cogs turning in Sam's head.

Eventually, he dumped the bag of washing into the snow and slid down the slope toward the wood shed. Grabbing his sledge he slipped and slithered his way back up the hill. Once at the top he triumphantly balanced the bag of washing in the middle of the sledge and experimentally pulled it a couple of metres to see how the whole thing handled. Evidently it was to his satisfaction and giving me a wide smile he sauntered over and held out his hands for the bag I was carrying. “Madam,” he said. He gave me a florid bow. “That bag looks heavy, please let me carry it for you.”

I theatrically fluttered a gloved hand at my throat and flapped my eyelashes at him. “Oh lawks, sir,” I said, “that would just be too too kind of you.”

I handed him the bag and, giggling, he squashed it onto the sledge and walked away dragging the whole thing easily over the compacted snow at the top of the flood defences.

Geoff watched him go. “Is it only me that can see imminent disaster?”

I shook my head. “Nope, any moment now.” I thought for a minute and turned back to Geoff. “It seems a little mean not to warn him,” I said.

Geoff gave Sam's retreating back a sad look. “But it would be so funny.”

I laughed and called out toward boy and sledge. “Sam, I'd keep that in the middle of the track if I were you, there's no telling what the ground's doing at the edges.”

Sam turned round and gave me a ‘look'. “I think I can pull a sledge, Mother.”

Geoff's beard split into a big happy smile. “There,” he said, “parental duty done, you warned him. Can I watch and laugh now?”

We both stood and watched as Sam hit a patch of ground that sloped sharply away from the river. Sure enough, as expected, the sledge slid over the edge and carrying a load that weighed a fair amount dragged Sam with it into the deep snow on the other side of the flood defences. The scream from our rather surprised son seemed to hang in the cold air. We watched as the bags of washing fell from the sledge and flung their contents with gay abandon all over the snow. It looked as though a herd of brightly coloured skiers had met some untimely demise.

Geoff snorted a laugh. “I supposed we'd better go and dig him out.”

I nodded. “I'm glad he tried that when the washing was dirty,” I said. “I might have been a bit miffed if all that had been cleaned and dried.” I trudged through the snow after Geoff. “At least he won't make the same mistake on the way back.”

Geoff came to a sudden halt, causing me to bump into his back. He turned to face me with an incredulous look. “You have actually met our son, haven't you?” he asked.

I gave him a small push; unfortunately it wasn't hard enough to send him the same way as the washing. “Don't be mean,” I said.

It took us about ten minutes to gather up clothes, son, and sledge and we watched as a rather wet and demoralised teenager pulled the sledge with a little more care over the final part of the walk.

We loaded everything into the back of the car and Sam sat gibbering, wet, and cold in the car while we cleared the snow and ice from the windows.

“Are you all right?” I glanced into the rear-view mirror.

He nodded, his teeth chattering. Finally he got his mouth to work and asked. “How long will it take for the car to warm up?”

I laughed. “Not long. I'll put my foot down and that will help the engine warm up.” I pulled carefully out of the snow-filled car park and on to the cleared road.

Geoff frowned. “What's the matter with this car?” He leant forward, listening to the engine. “It doesn't sound very good.”

I bit my lip, the last thing we needed was the car to fail on us. Hoping it was just as cold and miserable as the rest of us I put my foot down, maybe a little extra gas would clear whatever blockage seemed to be causing the car to cough and splutter. At the junction the car settled down to a nice even tick-over. I shrugged. “Seems all right now,” I said. I put the Kia in gear and tried to pull away. Nothing happened, the car just coughed and choked.

Geoff waved a hand at the ignition indicating that I ought to turn it off. “I think I'd better have a look,” he said.

It was getting nicely warm in the car now and I really didn't want to stand outside. “Do you need any help?”

He smirked. He knew very well that I wanted the answer to be no.

A couple of minutes later he emerged from under the bonnet and tapped on my window.

I rolled it down, wincing at the blast of frigid air.

“I think you'd better come and have a look at this,” he said.